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THE INFLUENCE OF ILLINOIS IN 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



BY 



WILLIAM E. BARTON, D. D., LL. D. 




REPRINTED FROM THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS STATE HISTORICAL 
SOCIETY FOR THE YEAR 1921 



(78186-226) 



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THE INFLUENCE OF ILLINOIS IN 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN 



BY 



WILLIAM E. BARTON, D. D.. LL. D. 




REPRINTED FROM THE TRANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS STATE HISTORICAL 
SOCIETY FOR THE YEAR 1921 



■l!n.3''iH"'«ir'nM 



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73186—225—1922 



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ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



THE INFLUENCE OF ILLINOIS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



By William E. Barton, D.D., LL.D. 

Lincoln and Illinois were twin-born. Abraham Lincoln first saw 
light on Sunda}', February 11, 1809. Nine days before his birth, Illi- 
nois, by Act of Congress, began its autonomous existence as a territory. 
The future commonwealth and its most illustrious citizen began life 
together, both unconscious of the influence which each was to exert 
upon the destiny of the other. 

The first seven years of Lincoln's life were spent in Kentucky, and 
twice seven years following were spent in Indiana. Both of those 
States did well by him ; but when he came to his twenty-first year, 
Illinois, his own State, beckoned to him, and he came. He came in 
the dawn of his young manhood, and the whole of that manhood he 
spent as a citizen of this, his State. From the time he entered the 
young commonwealth in the Spring of 1830, driving an ox-team 
through the rich, deep mud of her prairies, until he left it to be inau- 
gurated President of the United States, he lived in Illinois- Gladly 
yielding him to the Nation, when the Nation called, Illinois still knew 
him as her own, and believed in him and loved him ; and when his work 
was accomplished, and crowned by his martyrdom, Illinois stood tear- 
fully awaiting the arrival of that majestic funeral train that woiind 
its way westward through many cities from the Nation's capitol, and 
received back again into the heart of her soil the precious dust of her 
own Abraham Lincoln. 

It should be an interesting and profitable inquiry, what influence 
had Illinois upon Abraham Lincoln? Did she help or hinder in his 
development? Might it have been as well for him and the State had 
he lived otherwhere? These are legitimate questions, and not unprofit- 
able ; the more so because I do not find that they have been answered, 
or even very seriously asked. Among the biographers of Lincoln, no 
one, I think, traced his life so lovingly in its relation to that of his 
State, as Hon. Isaac N. Arnold. He approached the possibility of 
considering this question, but did not pursue the inquiry far, nor did 
he, apparently, arrive at a convincing answer. He said : 

"When, in 1830. Lincoln became a citizen of Illinois, this great common- 
wealth, now the third or fourth state in the Union, and treading fast upon 
the heels of Ohio and Pennsylvania, was on the frontier with a population a 
little exceeding one hundred and fifty thousand. In 1860, when Lincoln was 
elected President, it had nearly two millions, and was rapidly becoming the 
center of the Republic. Perhaps he was fortunate in selecting Illinois as 
his home." — Life of Abraham Lincoln, p. 29. 



Mr. Arnold went on to show how central to the Union Illinois 
had become, and he wrote of the growing importance of Illinois geo- 
graphically, but he did not in any definite way undertake to answer 
his question, whether it was well for Lincoln to have lived here, other 
than with a judicial qualification. "Perhaps he was fortunate in select- 
ing Illinois as his home." 

It seems to me that the time has come for a more positive answer. 
I believe that Lincoln would have been a great man if he had lived 
in another State, but that Illinois contributed to his making some ele- 
ments which were of particular significance, and which may have been 
indispensable to his preparation for the particular work to which God 
and the Nation called him. 

Two Theories of the Origin of Great Men. 

There are two opposing theories of the origin of great men. One 
of them, derived from Buckle and his school, attempts to account for 
all men, both individually and racially, by their environment, and by 
the conditions of the times in which they live. The other, of whose 
conviction Carlyle is the indignant spokesman*, explains not the man 
by his times, but his times by the man. Emerson agreed with Carlyle, 
and went even farther. Emerson would seem to say that the Atlantic 
Ocean was there because nothing smaller would have answered the 
purposes of Columbus. Columbus needed a large earth and a round 
earth and a wide ocean to express what was inherent in himself. The 
world and all external conditions are to be explained by the man, and 
not the man by his world. 

Something of this latter theory must be held as to genius. It has 
its own laws. It produces its great exponents in manner and form 
which cannot be predicted- It is impossible to explain Robert Burns 
without Scotland, but Scotland alone does not explain Burns. Scot- 
land has been on the map for a long time, and still there is but one 
Robert Burns. Henry Ward Beecher stood at the foot of his class 
in Amherst College. Since his day many men in Amherst College 



* Thus, with hot indignation, did Carlyle reply to the theory that great men ar*; 
the product of their time and only that : "I am well aware that In their days hero- 
worship, the thing I call hero-worship, professes to have gone out and finally ceased. 
This, for reasons which it will be worth while some time to inquire into, is an age 
that as it were denies the existence of great men ; denies the desirability of great men. 
Show our critics a great man, a Luther, for example, they begin to what they call 
'account' for him ; not to worship him, but to take the dimensions of him and bring 
him out to be a little kind of man ! He was the 'creature of the time,' they say ; the 
time called him forth, the time did everything, he nothing — but whatever the little critic 
could have done, too ! This seems to me but melancholy work. The time call forth ? 
Alas, we have known times call loudly enough for their great man, but could not find 
him when he was called ! He was not there ; Providence had not sent him ; the time 
calling its loudest, had to go down to confusion and wreck because he would not 
come when called. 

"For if we will think of it, no time need have gone to ruin could it have found 
a man great enougli, a man wise and good enough ; wishing to discern truly what the 
times wanted, valor to lead it on the ripht road thither : these are the salvation of 
any time. But I liken common languid times, with their unbelief, distress, per- 
ple'xity, with their languid doubting characters and embarrassed circumstances im- 
potently crumbling — down into ever worse distress toward final ruin — all this I 
liken to dry, dead fuel, waiting for the lightning out of heaven that should kindle It. 
The great "man, with his free force out of God's ovm hand, is the lightning. The 
dry, mouldering sticks are supposed to have called him forth ! They are critics of 
sm'all vision, I think, who cry: 'See is it not the sticks that make the fire?' No sadder 
proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men." — 
Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Worship, Chapter 1, pp. 14-15. 



5 

have stood at the foot of the class, and it is not known that that envi- 
ronment has produced any more Beechers. Socrates was the product 
of the Hfe and spirit of Athens ; but Athens has long since given up 
the expectation of producing by wholesale and as the product of Athe- 
nian environment men of Socratic mind. Of each of these men we 
must say that Drinkwater says first of other great leaders and then of 
Lincoln, "He was the lord of his event." 

But no great man can be understood entirely apart from his envi- 
ronment, and if he could, it would be unfair both to him and to his 
environment thus to attempt to interpret him. 

Lincoln would have been a great man in almost any environment. 
But Gra}^ is not the only man who has had occasion to moralize con- 
cerning the "mute inglorious Miltons" or the Cromwells guiltless of 
their country's blood, and guiltless of anything else good or bad enough 
to be mentioned, who lived and died in environments unsuited to their 
development. 

If Lincoln Had Lived in Another State. 

Illinois has a right to remind herself of those elements in the 
character of Lincoln which were, we will not say produced or created, 
but developed, by his Illinois environment. 

Lincoln was born in the very heart of Kentucky. It was the claim 
of the La Rue County when its representatives asked to be severed 
from Hardin and to become a separate county, that La Rue County, as 
measured from east to west, and from the northermost point in the 
State direct to the southern boundary, was the precise geographical 
center of the State. Its centrality gave rise to some semi-burlesque 
oratory at the time, and this probably suggested to Proctor Knott a 
portion of his noted speech which many years later did so much for 
Duluth, and relieved the solemn tedium of the United States House 
of Representatives with a hearty laugh. 

It is conceivable that Lincoln might have lived and died in Ken- 
tucky. If so, it is not certain that he would have lived and died un- 
known. Men from his own county rose to distinction, and he might 
have done so. But it is certain that he would not there have lived in 
an environment such as evoked in him those qualities that made him 
President- 
Indiana has its honorable place in the development of Lincoln. 
We cannot spare the record of those years of frontier life, nor of 
its proximity to that highway of traffic and thought, the Ohio River. 
Lincoln's life-long interest in river navigation was prompted by his 
experience in Indiana. His strong convictions on the slavery question 
were influenced in no unimportant degree by his voyage to New 
Orleans and his visit to the slave-market. Even if we discount the 
statement of John Hanks that Lincoln then declared that if he had an 
opportunity to "hit that institution" he would hit it hard, we know from 
Lincoln himself that the sight of slaves, chained and sold, aroused in 
him emotions of enduring significance ; and this we must credit in no 
small part to his life in Indiana. 



!j^ipi^]mr^« 



The Notable Influence of a Short Migration. 

I have sometimes ventured to wonder what would have happened 
to the Lincoln family had Thomas Lincoln continued to live in the 
home on Nolin Creek where Abraham Lincoln was born until the 
time when the Lincoln family left Kentucky. He would not have 
sailed down the same stream. It might never have occurred to Thomas 
Lincoln to sail down the river at all, for the distance by Nolin Creek 
and Green River is several times as great.* By crossing jMuldraugh's 
Hill and living on Knob Creek he was within much shorter distance 
of the Ohio River, and he reached it by an entirely different route. 
Had he continued to live on the Nolin Creek farm, and had he taken 
his long voyage from there, he would have landed much farther down 
the Ohio, at a point where the confluence of the rivers had already 
caused considerable settlements to be made. It is quite possible that 
he might have floated on as far as the shores of Missouri before finding 
land as convenient and as remote from settlement as he found in 
Spencer County, Indiana. 

If Lincoln had grown up in Hardin County, Kentucky, he might 
have received as good an education as he received in Spencer County, 
Indiana; have studied law and been admitted to the bar; have traveled 
the circuit and entered political life, and possibly have been elected 
to Congress. But it is hardly conceivable that Kentucky alone could 
have made him the man that he was when he left Illinois. 

Had the Lincoln family remained in Spencer County, Indiana, 
Lincoln's most feasible avenue out into life was by way of the Ohio 
river. That might have given him valuable contacts with life farther 
south, and have widened his influence and made him a man of note 
in some southern State. But that would not have done for him what 
was done for him in Illinois. 

Had the Lincoln family landed farther down the Ohio and made 
their home, as Daniel Boone did toward the end of his life, and as many 
other Kentuckians of Lincoln's day were doing, near the Mississ- 
ippi river and within the borders of the State of Missouri, it is hardly 
possible that he would have found there the environment which would 
have made him what he became. 

Social conditions in rural Kentucky, Alissouri and southern 
Indiana were not notably different from those in the portion of Illinois 
where Lincoln made his home ; but Lincoln found at New Salem and 



* In response to my request, the Director of the United States Geological Survey 
furnishes me this information : 

From Knob Creels by way of Rolling Forlj and Salt River, the flat boat of Thomas 
Lincoln floated 42 miles to the Ohio, and then, assuming that he landed at the point 
in Spencer County nearest his farm, 91 miles down the Ohio to his debarcation near 
the mouth of Anderson River. Had he embarked on Nolin River, at its point nearest 
to the Lincoln cabin before the removal from Nolin to Knob Creek, he would have 
floated down Nolin and Green Rivers 256 miles to reach the Ohio, and would have 
been 46 miles, by the Ohio channel, below the mouth of Anderson River. 

So far as I am aware, no one has considered the importance of this short removal 
from one sterile farm to another in the same county. I intend at some future time to 
work out more in detail the effects of the removal of the Lincoln family from Nolin 
Creek to Knob Creek. For the present it is enough to state that it appears to me 
that, while the distance was only about 15 miles, and within the same county, the 
effect upon the life of Lincoln was very great. Had the family remained upon Nolin 
Creek, they would not have been so likely to undertake a voyage of 256 miles to the 
Ohio ; and had they done so, they would have been very likely not to locate till they 
reached Missouri. 



at Springfield, and in the circuit of the Eighth Judicial District, some- 
thing which he did not find, and to the same degree was not very 
likely to have found, in any other place where he had lived, or was 
likely to have lived, had he not removed to Illinois. 

Remembering that wherever he lived he would have been an 
honest and influential man, and remembering further, that, in any 
environment which Thomas Lincoln would probably have chosen, con- 
ditions of his life would have possessed many elements in common with 
those which obtained in Illinois, we may move on from the realm of 
hypothesis and inquire what as a matter of fact Illinois did for Lin- 
coln that assisted in the development of his latent greatness- 

Illinois Stimulated Lincoln's Love of Learning. 

Lincoln found in Illinois conditions which powerfully stimulated 
his ambition to learn. He had received valuable instruction in Indiana. 
He had learned to read, and had developed a strong desire to read. 
He had read the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, a History of the United 
States, Robinson Crusoe, Weems' Life of Washington and the Stat- 
utes of Indiana. To this excellent list he had added a few other books 
which happened to be within reach, and so far as we know they were 
all remarkably good books. But he himself declared that "There was 
absolutely nothing to stimulate aimbition to learn." He learned, not 
because his environment was favorable, but because he had within 
him the determination to learn. 

In Illinois, Lincoln found himself in an environment which greatly 
encouraged his love of learning. New Salem may seem to the modern 
student a poor, squalid little village, no one of whose few houses cost 
much more than one hundred dollars. To Lincoln it was a city. It 
was not sufficiently metropolitan to make him feel like a stranger, but 
it had within it and passing through it men who greatly assisted in 
making Lincoln what he would not have been likely to become in 
Spencer County, Indiana. There he met Mentor Graham, the school- 
master. The "few chicken-tracks" which Lincoln was able to make 
on paper when he arrived became a clear, strong chirography. He had 
already written his "Chronicles of Ruben," and certain treatises on 
Temperance and on Cruelty to Animals ; but the debating society of 
New Salem encouraged him to write on many great themes, and gave 
him an appreciative audience. 

Oliver Wendell Holmes has reminded us that authors need a 
"mutual admiration society" in order to do their best work. Such a 
society, with its adjuncts of frank and robust criticism and free dis- 
cussion, Lincoln found at New Salem. 

There he studied Kirkham's Grammar under Mentor Graham. 
There he learned the rudiments of surveying. There he obtained his 
copy of Blackstone and read law. It was not simply that he found 
books in slightly larger number than had been available in Indiana ; 
he found an atmosphere that encouraged him to make the largest pos- 
sible use of books. 



i^^i^awntVtff I tm (UunTittPluiiinnJinnnim^^JUl 



A College Education Not Impossible. 

At this time Lincoln may even have considered the possibility of 
a college education. Some of his associates at New Salem were stu- 
dents at Illinois College. Lincoln himself became possessed of a book 
of Greek exercises. He probably did not make large use of it; but 
the fact that he owned it shows us that he did not think it impossible 
that he might learn Greek. After his removal to Springfield he engaged 
in a short study of German. Ann Rutledge desired him to spend at 
least one year at Illinois College, while she attended its academy. I 
have often wondered whether a college course would have made or 
unmade Lincoln. It might not have done either, but it is an interesting 
question, and one which I hope sometime to give a conjectural answer, 
whether a college course, such as Lincoln might have obtained at Illi- 
nois College in Jacksonville, would have developed his mind and 
character more directly toward his success in life than did his years 
at New Salem. He could probably have emerged from Illinois College 
less deeply in debt that he was when he left New Salem. Financially 
and geographically a college course was not impossible. At present we 
will not ask whether it would have been better for him and the world 
had he taken it, but only remind ourselves that Lincoln in Illinois was 
so situated that a college course was one of the possibilities. 

We cannot pursue the history of Lincoln's six years at New Salem 
intelligently and confine our study to the financial adventures of the 
firm of Lincoln and Berry, or the vicissitudes of Denton OflFutt or of 
Lincoln's rough-and-tumble encounters with the Clary Grove boys. 
Lincoln was in an environment that gave him adequate mental stimu- 
lous and encouragement. 

Illinois Favored Lincoln's Political Ambition. 

Lincoln found in lUinois conditions highly favorable to his ambi- 
tion to become a political leader. He had hardly landed from the 
return voyage of the flat boat which had conveyed him to New Orleans 
than he announced himself a candidate for the Legislature. The out- 
break of the Black Hawk War, if it interrupted for a few weeks his 
campaigning, brought him a popular election as captain, and did not 
diminish his political ambition or his prospect of success in that field. 

Had Abraham Lincoln's flat boat stuck, not on Rutledge's dam, 
but let us say at the foot of Long Wharf, Boston, or at the Battery 
in New York, or in Mobile or New Orleans, and had he made any one 
of those cities his home, and there entered political life, he would not 
have found conditions as favorable either for his immediate entry, or 
for his prospective development, as he found in Illinois. 

Illinois offered Lincoln an opportunity to enter politics almost the 
moment he crossed the State line. After a year spent as a day laborer 
in the vicinity of his father's home near Decatur, he made his second 
flat-boat journey to New Orleans, and by good forttme his boat stuck 
on the dam of Rutledge's mill at New Salem. Returning from New 
Orleans, in the Summer of 1831, he took up his home in that micro- 
scopic and short-lived village, and almost immediately proclaimed him- 
self a candidate for the legislature. 



Illinois politics up to this time had been local and factional. The 
State was a Democratic State ; its southern part was settled very largely 
from Kentucky, and its northern portion as yet was almost uninhab- 
ited. National politics entered the State with the popularity of Andrew 
Jackson, and took a strong hold on the life and enthusiasm of the 
voters in 1840, when William Henry Harrison was a candidate, and 
the watchwords were "Log cabin and hard cider." It was not neces- 
sary for a candidate to have any large political program in 1832. Abra- 
ham Lincoln fitted well into his new environment. An unlettered 
backwoodsman, just off a flat boat, could poll a very respectable vote 
as a candidate for a member of the legislature in 1832, and could be 
elected two years thereafter, and re-elected regularly once in two years 
so long as he cared to announce himself a candidate. But Abraham 
Lincoln and Illinois politics were both developing through that period. 
Neither he nor the political situation remained unmodified. Illinois 
was not too proud to receive Abraham Lincoln as a member of her 
legislature in 1834, and was gratified and honored to have a share in 
electing him President in 1860. Illinois fvirnished a part of the neces- 
sary environment for the political development of Lincoln. 

We know the political character of Illinois at the time when Lin- 
coln became a resident of the State. It was Democratic, and its De- 
mocracy was divided between the "whole-hog" Democrats and those 
whose devotion to Andrew Jackson carried them to less violent ex- 
tremes. Lincoln's personal backgrounds were those of Jacksonian 
Democracy. Thomas Lincoln was a Jackson Democrat ; John Hanks, 
as late as 1860, was "an old Democrat who will vote for Lincoln." 
Persons who heard what is believed to have been Lincoln's first stump 
speech at Decatur in the summer of 1830 sa}^ that he was then for 
Jackson and internal improvements. I have not found the personal 
recollections of those who profess to have heard this speech very clear 
or consistent, but they may be correct. Andrew Jackson was a name to 
capture the imagination, and he may at that time have been Lincoln's 
hero personally if not politically. Lamon holds that Lincoln at the 
outset was "a nominal Jackson man." He says on the authority of 
Dennis Hanks that Lincoln was "Whiggish but not a Whig." (Lamon : 
Life of Lincoln, 123, 126.) 

From the time of his first candidacy, however, there is nothing 
that identifies Lincoln with Jackson Democracy. His earliest announce- 
ment of himself as a candidate for the legislature did not name the 
party with which he was affiliated, and he was warmly supported by 
local Democrats as well as Whigs. But as soon as he began to express 
any principles which could be alligned with national issues, they were 
unqualifiedly those of the Whigs. He may have continued to admire 
Andrew Jackson, but he became immediately a disciple of Henry Clay. 
(See Nicolay and Hay, 1 : 102, 103; Morse, 1 : 38.) 

In this development his personal evolution was like that of the 
State. But Lincoln's own development was in advance of that of the 
State as a whole, and qualified him to lead in a movement that in time 
committed Illinois against the policy of the extension of slavery. 



10 

The Incidental Values of Political Mistakes. 

It would perhaps be but fair to add that the standards which ob- 
tained in Illinois politics were the more favorable to the advancement 
of Lincoln because the mistakes of politicians in his day, in which mis- 
takes Lincoln participated, were so largely the mistakes of the whole 
body of the people and of Lincoln's constituents, that a public official 
was not too summarily condemned to oblivion for his errors of judg- 
ment. Governor Ford comments on this matter with characteristic 
severity, condemning the "Long Nine" whose log-rolling in connection 
with the removal of the Capital from Vandalia to Springfield cost the 
State, as he maintained, more than the value of all the real estate in the 
vicinity of Springfield, and he records the names of those members 
of the House of Representatives who voted for the disastrous "Inter- 
nal improvement system." He was especially indignant when he con- 
sidered how many of these men, who, as he believed, ought to have 
been repudiated by the people, were continued in office. Ninian W. 
Edwards and others were "since often elected or appointed to other 
offices, and are yet all of them popular men. . . . Dement has been 
twice appointed Receiver of Public Moneys. . . . Shields to be 
Auditor, Judge of the Supreme Court, Commissioner of the General 
Land Office, and Brigadier General in the Mexican War. . . . Lin- 
coln was several times elected to the Legislature and finally to Con- 
gress ; and Douglas, Smith and McClernand have been three times 
elected to Congress, and Douglas to the United States Senate. Being 
all of them spared monuments of popular wrath, evincing how safe 
it is to be a politician, and how disastrous it may be to the country to 
keep along with the present fervor of the people." — History of Illinois, 
pp. 195, 196. 

We need not claim for Lincoln in these matters wisdom superior 
to that of his associates, but may remind ourselves that his errors of 
judgment were not only shared by his associates in office, but that their 
errors did not prevent his repeated re-election, much to the disgust of 
Governor Ford, who counted him one of the "spared monuments of 
popular wrath." 

The historian of the future is certain to set enhanced value upon 
Governor Ford's History of Illinois. The future student is not likely 
to condemn with less severity than Governor Ford either the log-rolling 
of early Illinois politics or the folly of the financial methods by which 
it was undertaken to support the State banks and the Internal Improve- 
ment system which ended with the financial crash of 1837. In the 
main Governor Ford was right. But Governor Ford lacked perspec- 
tive. He was not strictly accurate in describing Lincoln and his asso- 
ciates as "spared monuments of popular wrath." There ought to have 
been more wrath than there was. The men who were responsible for 
those measures in the Legislature fairly represented the will and the 
wisdom or unwisdom of their constituents. The law-makers and the 
men who elected them to make laws were involved in the same attempts 
to create values out of things that had no value. The long list which 
Governor Ford gives us of men who were responsible for the financial 



11 

evils of their time and who nevertheless were thereafter elected and 
re-elected to office is its own answer. These men were as wise as their 
constituents, and not much wiser. Illinois had to learn from bitter 
experience, and Lincoln was one of the men who had his share in the 
education which the whole State was compelled to undergo. 

Lake and River Transportation. 

Lincoln became a factor in Illinois life just at the time when the 
question of transportation was becoming most acute. Whatever sur- 
plus Illinois produced in the early days, was floated down the Mississ- 
ippi, whose commercial outlet was New Orleans ; but there were other 
agricultural states tributary to the Mississippi, and the wharves of 
New Orleans were piled high in time with unmarketable produce. It 
was less easy to float goods upstream than down, and New Orleans 
was not a manufacturing city. The goods which Illinois required for 
her own use were largely produced in Philadelphia or New York. The 
accounts and bills payable of Illinois merchants tended to accumulate 
in New York ; the credits were in New Orleans. The money in circu- 
lation was largely issued by wildcat banks, and afforded no suitable 
basis of exchange. If this situation went on permanently, Illinois 
could have no great commercial future. Her banking was principally 
done in St. Louis. In 1831, for the first time, goods were imported 
from the East to St. Louis by way of Chicago at one-third less cost 
than by New Orleans. That fact did more than we can now imagine 
to compel the unification of Illinois. Lake Michigan became a neces- 
sity to Menard and Sangamon Counties, as certainly as to Cook County 
and the northern end of the State. We remember the disastrous experi- 
ments in public improvements by means of which creeks were ^^o have 
become rivers and canals were to have connected the heads of naviga- 
tion through the State. Let us not forget that these conditions with 
all their blundering and bankruptcy were potent in making Illinois a 
commercial unit and in securing her a place of influence in the com- 
mercial life of the nation. 

Illinois and the Unification of the Nation. 

The relation of Illinois to the unification of the nation was no 
accident. Governor Thomas Ford died in 1850, leaving the manu- 
script of his History of Illinois to be published after his decease. In 
that work he clearly set forth the aim of Hon. Nathaniel Pope, delegate 
in Congress from the Territory of Illinois, when, in January, 1818, he 
on his own responsibility amended the proposal for the admission of 
Illinois to the Union by moving her boundary north from the southern 
extremity of Lake Michigan to the line of 42° 30' so as to include 
within the State fourteen additional counties and the port of Chicago. 
Governor Ford said : 

"It was known that in all confederated republics there was danger 
of dissolution . . . Illinois had a coast of 150 miles on the Ohio 
river, and nearly as much on the Wabash; the Mississippi was its 
western boundary for the whole length of the State ; the commerce of 
all the western country was to pass by its shores, and would necessarily 



I'liimraoinniimrotmiimiffllHl'miltefJrdJ 



12 

come to a focus at the mouth of the Ohio, at a point within this State, 
and within the control of IlHnois, if, the Union being dissolved, she 
should see proper to control it. It was foreseen that none of the great 
States in the West could venture to aid in dissolving the Union, with- 
out cultivating a State situate in such a central and commanding posi- 
tion. What then was the duty of the national government? Illinois 
was certain to be a great State with any boundaries which that govern- 
ment could give. ... If left entirely upon the waters of these great 
rivers, it was plain that, in case of threatened disruption, the interest 
of the new State would be to join a southern and western confederacy. 
But if a large portion of it could be made dependent upon the com- 
merce and navigation of the great northern lakes, connected as they 
are with the eastern States, a rival interest would be created, to check 
the wish for a western and southern confederacy. It therefore became 
the duty of the national government, not only to make Illinois strong, 
but to raise an interest inclining and binding her to the eastern and 
northern portions of the Union. This could be done only through an 
interest in the lakes. At that time the commerce on the lakes was 
small, but its increase was confidently expected, and indeed it has 
exceeded all expectations and is still in its infancy. To accomplish 
this object effectually, it was not only necessary to give to Illinois the 
port of Chicago, and a route for the canal, but a considerable coast on 
Lake Michigan, with a country back of it sufficiently extensive to con- 
tain a population capable of exercising a decided influence upon the 
councils of the State." — Ford's History of Illinois, 22-23. 

If Governor Ford had written these words after the Civil War, 
we might have suspected him of attributing to Judge Pope more of 
political foresight than either he or Judge Pope really possessed. But 
he wrote before 1850, and we have no reason to doubt that this remark- 
ably clear view of the influence of Illinois as a State that might bind 
together the expanding Union was really possessed by Judge Pope 
when he secured for the new State her fourteen additional counties, 
including the port of Chicago, and keenly appreciated by Governor 
Ford in his stern opposition* to the proposals of Wisconsin that the 
northern counties of Illinois should be restored to the newer State. 

The Courts of Illinois Developed Lincoln. 

Illinois offered to Lincoln through her Circuit Courts an oppor- 
tunity of widening his acquaintance and influence and also of meeting 
in political and legal relations a circle of men admirably suited to his 
intellectual development. The lawyers of early Illinois represented 
widely divergent tA^pes. There were frontier shysters of small ability 



• The fight of Wisconsin was very strong in Ford's administration. Not only so, but 
the northern counties of Illinois were inclined to think they had more in common with 
Wispdnsin th;iii with Ejrypt. Thore was iiKirc than ono potition from thi> countios 
themselves or from some party within thei asking that they be severed from Illinois and 
joint'd to the State to the north. Governor Ford's argument in refutation of the chiim 
of Wisconsin is given in extcnso in his HiHtorii and is a document of permanent 
interest. 

A proposal to separate northern Illinois from southern Illinois is at this moment 
pending before the General Assembly. Those who propose such a sundering of what 
God hath joined will find instructive reading in some of the early literature of this 
State. 



13 

and less legal learning, but there also were men of large native ability, 
whose wits were sharpened by much experience. Lincoln's practice 
soon brought him before the Supreme Court of Illinois, where he had 
to plead before judges of learning and high standing. The courts of 
Illinois were not essentially different from those of Indiana and l^.Iis- 
souri in the same period. Any of the frontier States then rapidly 
filling could have furnished him an arena for his legal skill ; but the 
skill which Lincoln developed and the acquaintance which he formed 
in Illinois had their relation to a political situation which no other 
State could quite have duplicated. Mr. Arnold relates an interesting 
incident which occurred after Mr. Lincoln was elected President. He 
was asked to appoint a man named Butterfield to a position in the 
Army. This man Butterfield was the son of Justin Butterfield, who in 
1849 had secured an appointment to the Land Office, a position greatly 
desired by Lincoln at the close of his term in Congress. Arnold says : 

When the application was presented, the President paused, and after 
a moment's silence, said: "Mr. Justin Butterfield once obtained an appoint- 
ment I very much wanted, and in which my friends believed I could have 
been useful, and to which they thought I was fairly entitled, and I have 
hardly ever felt so bad at any failure in my life; but I am glad of an oppor- 
tunity of doing a service to his son." And he made an order for his commis- 
sion. He then spoke of the offer made to him of the governorship of Oregon. 
To which the reply was made: "How fortunate that you declined. If you 
had gone to Oregon, you might have come back as Senator, but you never 
would have been President." — Life of Abraham Lincoln, 81. 

Lincoln assented to the foregoing and said he had always been a 
fatalist, believing with Hamlet in the Divinity that shapes our ends. 

Oregon could have made Lincoln a Senator, but it is not certain 
that any other State than Illinois could have made him President. He 
needed essentially the conditions which he found in Illinois to develop 
the qualities which were inherent in him; and he needed a political 
situation such as existed in Illinois to make him at the opportune time 
the President of the United States. We can never be too certain con- 
cerning the negative implications of a study like this. We can never 
be quite sure what another State might have done. We are quite 
certain that no other State, then in the L^ion, could have furnished 
all the conditions which Illinois supplied and which were so important 
both in the evolution of Lincoln and in his elevation. 

Illinois the National Keystone. 

Pennsylvania is proud of her soubriquet, "the Keystone state." 
Had that name not been pre-empted when the L^nion formed a smaller 
arch, it should have been reserved for Illinois. Both the shape and 
geographical position of Illinois entitle her to that designation. Her 
superficial area extends from the lakes to the confluence of the great 
rivers, and hence virtually from the northern boundary of the nation 
to Mason and Dixon's Line. In the beginning it shared with Ken- 
tucky and Missouri the status of a southern State, but Lincoln saw 
and had some reason to fear the development of its northern and larger 
portion. It was an ominous sign for Lincoln when he who had done 
so much for the election of Zacharv Taylor as President, was set aside 



14 

in his application for the Land Office and that position was given to 
Mr. Justin Butterfield of Chicago.* Lincoln had good reason to fear 
the growth of Chicago and of northern Illinois. As late as the State 
Convention of the Republican party at Decatur in 1860, the northern 
part of Illinois was for Seward. Not even the sight of John Hanks' 
two fence rails wholly convinced the politicians of the Chicago area 
that Lincoln was the right man for President. His solidifying of his 
own State was an important step toward the solidifying of the nation. 

The River and Harbor Convention. 

So far as I am aware no biographer of Lincoln has ever heard of 
y the River and Harbor Convention of 1847. I do not find it mentioned 
by Nicolay and Hay, by Arnold, by Morse, by Miss Tarbell, or by any 
other biographer of Lincoln. But it was that which first brought 
Lincoln to Chicago. The Chicago papers, truthful then as always, 
stated that this was the first visit of the Honorable Abraham Lincoln 
to the "commercial emporium of the State."* He was more welcome 
than he might have been at some earlier periods in his career. In the 
first place he was the only Whig member of Congress from Illinois, 
was just elected and had not yet taken his seat. In the second place 
he was thoroughly committed to the policy of developing Inland waters 
and of connecting the lakes with the rivers. It will some time become 
the duty of the historian to show what that convention did for Abra- 
ham Lincoln. The presiding officer of that convention was Edward 
Bates of Missouri. Lincoln probably did not know It at the time, but 
then and there he probably formed the impression which later made 
Bates a member of his Cabinet. It was there that Lincoln first heard 
Horace Greeley, and Greeley heard Lincoln in a short and tactful 
speech. Greeley did not know it, but he was forming an Impression of 
Lincoln, which thirteen years later was to influence his judgment in 
accepting Lincoln as the compromise candidate who could not only 
defeat Seward in the Convention, but defeat the Democratic nominee in 
the election following. What Lincoln came to learn of the qualities 
essential to unifying his own State went far toward making him capable 
of unifying the nation. 



* Justin Butterfield was born in Keene, N. H., In 1790. He studied at Williams 
College, and was admitted to the bar at Watertown, N. Y., in 1812. After some years 
of practice in New York state be removed to New Orleans, and in 1835 to Chicago. 
Fie soon attained high rank in his profession. In 1841 he was appointed by President 
Harrison United States District Attorney. In 1849 he was appointed by President 
Taylor Commissioner of the General Land OflSce. He was logical and resourceful, and 
many stories are told of his quick wit. He died October 25. 18.35. 

Mr. Butterfield probably owed his appointment over Mr. Lincoln to the influence 
of Daniel Webster, who was his personal friend, and also to the growing importance 
of the northern portion of the State of Illinois. Taylor was, according to his own 
pre-election statement, "a Whig, but not an ultra-Whig." The Whig interests in 
Illinois could better afford to overlook the claims of a down-state ex-congressman than 
those of a strongly backed representative from the; Wliig end of the State. 



* ".\braham Lincoln, the only Whig representative to Congn-ss from this State, 
we are happy to see in attendance upon the Convention. This is his first visit to the 
commercial emporium of the State, and we have no doubt his firsc visit will Impress 
him more deeply, if possible, with the importance, and inspire a higher zeal for the 
great interest i)f river-and harbor iiniirovenients. Wc expect iiuicli from him as an 
representative in Congress, and we have no doubt our expectations will be more than 
realized, for never was reliance placed in a nobler heart and a sounder judgment. 
We know the banner he bears will never be soiled.'" — Chicago Journal, July 6, 1847. 



15 

The Chicago Journal in an indignant editorial inquired whether 
of the River and Harbor bill, on August 3, 1846, by President James 
K. Polk, that bill had contained appropriations of $15,000 for the 
Harbor of Buffalo, $20,000 for Cleveland, $40,000 for the St. Clair 
flats, $80,000 for Ad^ilwaukee, Racine, Chicago and other nearby ports, 
and sums for other lake harbors. President Polk affirmed that as these 
ports were not harbors of vessels used in international trade, "It would 
seem the dictate of wisdom under such circumstances to husband our 
means, and not waste them on comparatively unimportant objects." 

The Chicago Journal in an indignant editorial inquired whether 
this same James K. Polk was not squandering millions upon an inva- 
sion of Mexico for the sake of the extension of slavery? Was he not 
buying steamboats at exorbitant prices for use in the transportation 
of troops and supplies to Mexico, and leaving our legitimate commerce 
on the lakes unprotected, with lives liable to be lost for lack of safe 
harbors, and great territory of our own undeveloped while he sought 
to acquire other territory by bloody means and for ignoble ends? 
What an insult to the intelligence of the nation for him to declare that 
these lake harbors were "comparatively unimportant objects !" 

A great convention assembled in Chicago on July 5, 1847, to pro- 
test against James K. Polk and all his works, to advance the interests 
of the lake harbors, and incidentally to promote the welfare of the 
Whig party. The significance of that convention has never been ade- 
quately understood.* 

The attendance upon the River and Harbor Convention was not 
limited to residents of lake cities. There were seven delegates from 
Connecticut, one from Florida, two from Georgia, twelve from Iowa, 
two from Kentucky, two from Maine, twenty-eight from Massachu- 
setts, forty-five from Missouri, two from New Hampshire, eight from 
New Jersey, twenty-seven from Pennsylvania, three from Rhode 
Island, one from South Carolina. I have not tried to count the long 
lists from New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wiscon- 
sin. These are all located by counties, and show a widespread repre- 
sentation from all parts of these States. The Convention was felt to 
be of vast economic interest, and was by no means lacking in political 
importance. Theoretically it was assembled for the consideration of 
internal improvements ; but in addition to this it was convened for the 
sake of opposing James K. Polk and all his political associations. 

Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, Thomas H. Benton, Lewis Cass 
and other national leaders all were invited, and responded in letters, 
that of Webster especially being a document of considerable size and 
importance. Anson Burlingame headed the Massachusetts delegation, 
and Ohio followed the lead of Thomas Corwin. 

Horace Greeley was there, and he wrote up the convention for 
the New York Tribune, and ever afterward advised young men to 
"Go West, and grow up with the country." Thurlow Weed reported 



* I am indebted to Mr. James Shaw, of Aurora, for first calling my attention to 
the significance of this convention. 



WT 



16 

it in full for the Albany Jottrnal, and gave an interesting account of 
his own journey around the lakes on "the magnificent steamer, 
Enipire." 

The political aspects of the convention are suggested b}' the fact 
that Lewis Cass of Michigan, w^hich State might have benefited by 
river and harbor improvements, remained away and sent a very dis- 
tant note of regret, while Daniel Webster, from Massachusetts, in a 
long letter read at the convention, came out unqualifiedly for all that 
the convention stood for. Cass wanted to be President, and greatly 
needed the vote of the slave States ; Webster's position was, of course, 
that of a politician who greatly desired to link the political and eco- 
nomic future of the new States with the North and East. 

David Dudley Field was present to speak for the administration. 
He did it with shrewdness ; Greeley gives the gist of his address. The 
convention did not treat him any too courteously ; and Lincoln followed 
with his one speech, a tactful one, of which we have no report, but 
one that appears to have stood for fair play while being ardently in 
favor of the whole plan of internal improvements. The convention 
at its next session apologized to Mr. Field for the uncivil treatment 
he had received, but did not alter its program, or change its convictions 
on account of this apolog}' for bad manners. 

* The River and Harbor Convention of 1847 put Chicago upon the 
nation's map. It did more than any previous or subsequent assembly 
to link the fortunes of the great State of Illinois with the North and 
East. 

It must have been a very illuminating event to Lincoln. It was 
his first visit to Chicago, his first view of the great lakes.* It was his 
first important reminder that, while he was elected from Central Illi- 
nois, he, as the only Whig member of Congress from the State, must 
find his political support thereafter largely in the newer portion of 
the State where the \Vhigs were more largely in control. It must have 
reminded him, and he was soon to be rudely reminded again, that 
Chicago, and Northern Illinois with her, was thenceforth to be reck- 
oned with as an important political as well as economic factor. He 
had hoped to effect the unity of Illinois by a canal connecting the lakes 
with the rivers ; whether this ever was accomplished or not, the whole 
future of Illinois, central and southern as well as northern, was tied 
up with Chicago, and through Chicago with the East and North. Illi- 
nois, with her whole western boundary washed by the Mississippi, her 
southern border hemmed in by the Ohio, and a large part of her east- 
ern border determined by the Wabash, and all of these streams bearing 
their cargoes through slave territory to New Orleans, was an indivis- 
ible political and economic, unit, bound by Chicago and the great lakes 
to New York and New England, Ohio and Pennsylvania. 



* My good friends. Mr. J. Seymour Currey, of Evanston, and Prof. Julius E. Olson, 
of the State University of Wisconsin, are of opinion tliat Lincoln made two earlier visits 
to riiicapro ; and they may be correct. To me. however, the evidence does not appear 
entirely conclusive; and in any event, tliose earlier visits, if they occurred, were with- 
out important significance. Prof. Olson's interesting study is published by the Wis- 
consin Historical Society. Vol. 4. p. 44. 1920, and Mr. Currev's suggestive article is in 
the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society. Vol. 12, No. 3, Oct., 1919, p. 412. 



17 

Illinois and Slavery. 

In 1808, one year before the birth of Lincoln, the slave trade 
ceased by constitutional limitation. If slaver}^ itself could have gone 
out with the importation of slaves, the history of Lincoln and our 
nation had been quite otherwise. It was not so, and in 1820 came the 
Missouri Compromise. By this act Missouri was admitted to the 
Union as a slave State, and slavery which before that time had been 
held south of Mason and Dixon's line was extended for north on the 
west side of the Mississippi river ; but by the agreement then entered 
upon, States thereafter to be admitted into the Union were to come 
in free unless they lay south of the parallel of 36 degrees and 30 min- 
utes north longitude, the southern boundary of Missouri. For thirty- 
four years that Compromise had stood, but thirty-four years is a long 
time, and slavery had been gaining ground. The Louisiana purchase 
had brought in material for a number of new slave states and the 
Mexican War had brought in others. California had indeed entered 
the L^nion as a free State, but that was not the fault of the slave- 
holding element in Congress or even of the then occupant of the 
White House. 

The removal of the Capital of the United States from Washington 
and later from Philadelphia to a small district taken from and bounded 
by the two slave States of Maryland and Virginia did much to 
strengthen slavery socially and politically. In 1854 the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill repealed the Missouri Compromise, started Kansas to 
bleeding, set John Brown's soul and body to marching in the path 
that led to the gallows, and called Abraham Lincoln back into politics, 
from which he had retired in 1848. 

Abraham Lincoln could not remember the time when he had not 
believed slavery to be wrong, but he found no occasion in his early 
political life to make slavery a direct issue. It was well for him and 
the nation that his home was in a State where he had to define his own 
position on the slavery question in terms both ethical and legal. 

Illinois as a part of the Northwest Territory was forever dedi- 
cated as a shrine of freedom ; but Illinois as a State settled from Ken- 
tucky permitted a good many slaves to be held by families who moved 
into the State and brought their negroes with them. Illinois had a 
"Black Code" of disgraceful and revolting severity. On ]\Iarch 3. 
1837, Abraham Lincoln and Dan Stone, representatives from the 
County of Sangamon, filed their protest against resolutions adopted 
on the preceding day by their fellow members of the House of Rep- 
resentatives, violently denouncing abolitionists and expressing strong 
pro-slavery sympathies. This protest of Lincoln and Stone stated that 
its two signers, "believe that the institution of slavery is founded on 
both injustice and bad policy." In 1841 the sale of a negro girl named 
Nancy, resulted in the case of Bailey vs. Cromwell, which was carried 
to the Supreme Court of Illinois. There Lincoln contended that this 
slave girl was free by virtue of the Ordinance of 1787, which prohibited 
slavery in the Northwest Territory. This case which Lincoln argued 



18 

when he was thirty-two years of age, compelled him to consider slavery 
both in its legal and its moral aspects. Such an issue could hardly 
have risen, except in Illinois or Indiana or Ohio.* 

The Repeal of the Missouri Compromise. 

The leader in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise was Stephen 
Arnold Douglas, Senator from Illinois, and at that time chairman of the 
Senate Committee on Territories. Whether he was the real author of 
the measure is hotly disputed. The most careful study of this question 
seems to me to be that of Prof. P. Orman Ray, who, after a careful 
analysis of the material available, supports the view of Colonel John 
A. Parker, in his pamphlet, "The Secret History of the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill", and derives the movement for the repeal to the fac- 
tional strife in Missouri between Thomas Hart Benton and David R. 
Atchison. Atchison, as Professor Ray believes, was the real author of 
the measure; and his conclusions appear to me to be valid. (See The 
Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, by P. Orman Ray, Ph.D., Cleve- 
land, 1909). He shows that much has been written about the part 
which Douglas took, and of his motive in the matter, is not sustained 
by adequate evidence, and that some things which Douglas claimed, 
as, for instance, that for eight years prior to the repeal, he had stead- 
ily advocated it, appear to be unreliable. But conceding, as we may 
well concede, the authorship of the repeal to David R. Atchison, and 
perhaps also in part to Judge William C. Price, it is Douglas with 
whom we have to reckon as the man responsible for the form of its 
presentation, for its report from the Committee, and for its adoption 
by Congress and discussion by the country, and Douglas was proud 
to be known as its responsible author. 

And, whatever Douglas' motive at the outset, or even if he had 
then no motive except that of the possibility of being removed from 
the chairmanship of the Committee on Territories, to make way for 
Atchison to introduce the bill, he must ultimately have seen that he 
was certain to be held responsible for it, and it was well for him, if he 
expected to be a candidate for the Presidency, to use to his advantage 
in the Southern States what was certain to be used to his disadvantage 
in the States where a strong anti-slavery sentiment existed. 

Beyond any reasonable doubt Douglas hoped to gain sufficient 
political influence in the slave-holding states to make him President. 
In the two sketches of Lincoln's life which he himself prepared, 
Abraham Lincoln stated that after his return from Congress in 1848, 
he returned to the practice of law with more ardor than he ever had 
manifested before, but that the Missouri Compromise recalled him 
to political activity. When Abraham Lincoln found himself recalled 
to political life by a great moral crisis in the life of the nation, it was 
the good fortune of Illinois to be able to furnish to Abraham Lincoln 
a foeman worthy of his steel. He did not have to go out of his own 
State to meet the national issue. Illinois furnished him an arena of 



* Thporetioally, such a case might have risen in any one of the five States carved 
out of the Northwest Territory, but it would not have been lilcely to rise in Wisconsin 
or Michigan, because they were newer and more remote from slave territory. 



19 

national proportions. He did not need to go to Missouri or to bleed- 
ing Kansas, though he paid an important visit to the latter; he was 
able to beard the slavery lion in his political den in his own State and 
the State of Douglas. 

An Illinois Foeman Worthy of Lincoln's Steel. 

Who can measure the influence upon Lincoln of the fact that 
Stephen A. Douglas was in 1854 and still in 1858 not only a resident 
of Illinois but a dominant force in national politics? The joint debate 
between these two great men stands out in our national life and occu- 
pies a place all its own. The significant fact of our present purpose 
is that this contest found both of its notable participants in this State 
and the State itself on tiptoe eager for the contest between them. 

Both Lincoln and Douglas knew that Illinois was not a unit, 
and each of them used that fact to the utmost to the disadvantage of 
the other. Douglas repeatedly charged Lincoln with uttering senti- 
ments in Northern Illinois which he would not dare to repeat in 
Egypt; and Lincoln succeeded in committing Douglas to the "Free- 
port heresy" which ultimately proved his undoing. 

But Lincoln forced the issue on this platform, that while the 
Constitution recognized slavery as existing, and he had no plan or 
purpose to interfere with it where it then was, the framers of the 
Constitution had clearly understood that slavery was an evil, and it 
was a thing to be faced as such. At Galesburg, Lincoln quoted Doug- 
las as saying that Douglas did not care whether slavery was voted up 
or voted down ; and he proceeded : 

"Judge Douglas declares that if any community wants slavery, they have 
a right to it. He can say that logically, if he says there is no wrong in 
slavery; but if you admit that there is a wrong in it, he cannot logically say 
that anybody has a right to do wrong. He insists that, upon the score of 
equality, the owners of slaves and the owners of property — or horses and 
every other kind of property — should be alike, and hold them alike in a 
new territory. That is perfectly logical if the two species of property are 
alike and equally founded in right. But if you admit that one of them is 
wrong, you cannot institute any equality between right and wrong. 

"Now, I confess myself as belonging to that class in the country who 
regard slavery as a moral, social and political evil having due regard for 
its actual existence among us and the difficulties of getting rid of it in any 
satisfactory way, and to all the constitutional obligations which have been 
thrown about it; but, nevertheless, desire a policy which looks to the pre- 
vention of it as a wrong, and look hopefully to the time when as a wrong 
it may come to an end. He is blowing out the moral lights around us when 
he contends that whoever wants slaves has a right to hold them." 

It was thus that Lincoln came to his position, not as an aboli- 
tionist, but as one who could say what Lincoln did say with great 
deliberation at Springfield on June 17, 1858 : 

" 'A house divided against itself cannot stand.' I believe this govern- 
ment cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I do not expect 
the Union to be dissolved — I do not expect the house to fall — but I do expect 
that it will cease to be divided. It will become all one thing, or all the 
other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, 
and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course 
of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward till it shall be- 
come alike lawful in all the states, old as well as new, north as well as south." 



MiP«I!?n!lW!r!!ti!1f^"-' ^"'"'lillj 



20 

How carefully Lincoln had prepared this paragraph and its 
context is shown by the fact that when Douglas made quotations from 
it a few months later, Lincoln was able to repeat it word for word, 
saying as he did so, that Douglas had repeated it so often that Lincoln 
had learned it from him. That, of course, was only an excuse for 
knowing it so well that he could repeat it months after the occasion 
for which it had been prepared. The fact is, that when Lincoln went 
before the convention which on June 17, 1858, nominated him as a 
candidate against Douglas for Senator, Lincoln had determined to 
force the slavery issue upon moral grounds, indicated by the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise; and the man with whom he had to discuss 
that issue was not John C. Calhoun of North Carolina or any other 
statesman from the Southern States, but Stephen A Douglas, of 
Illinois. 

The Slavery Issue National and Moral. 

Considered in their intellectual aspects, it is hard to decide which 
to admire the more, the speeches of Lincoln or those of Douglas. 
But what we are to remember is that Lincoln deliberately forced the 
consideration of slavery in its ethical aspects. Douglas set forth 
strongly his claim for "squatter sovereignty." He maintained that the 
founders of the republic never intended that there should be uniform- 
ity in matters of local concern, but that there should be large liberty 
in each State to decide its own policy in matters within its own bound- 
aries. The slavery issue thus was an issue for each State to determine 
in its own way. He insisted that to hold this principle was not to 
commit one's self to the pro-slavery view ; he did not care, so far as 
this principle was concerned, whether slavery was voted up or voted 
down, but he did care for the sacred right of each State to work out 
its own salvation in matters of its own concern. 

But what Lincoln said at the outset, he reiterated in nearly every 
speech, and stated thus in the debate at Quincy: 

"The difference of opinion, reduced to its lowest terms, is no other than 
the difference between the men who think slavery a wrong, and those who do 
not think it a wrong. The Republican party think it wrong; we think it is 
a moral, a social, a political wrong. We think it a wrong not confining itself 
to the persons or the states where it exists, but that it is a wrong in its 
tendency, to say the least, that extends itself to the existence of the whole 
nation. Because we think it wrong, we propose a course of policy that shall 
deal with it as a wrong. We deal with it as with any other wrong, in so far 
as we can prevent its growing any larger, and so deal with it that in the 
run of time there may be some promise of an end to it. We have a due 
regard to the actual presence of it amongst us, and the difficulties of getting 
rid of it in any satisfactory way, and all the constitutional obligations thrown 
about it." 

It was no political accident that drove Lincoln to this position. 
The Kansas-Nebraska bill and the Dred Scot decision had practically 
nationalized slavery. This he affirmed in his speech in Springfield, 
June 17, 1858, and in that speech declared that a house divided against 
itself could not stand. He knew what answer Senator Douglas would 
make. There was nothing in the Chicago speech of Douglas on July 



mimmmmmmmmmimmm 



21 

9, 1858, that surprised him, and Lincohi was present and heard it. 
Douglas quoted Lincoln's "house divided against itself" paragraph, 
and commented. 

"In other words, Mr. Lincoln asserts, as a fundamental principle of this 
government, that there must be uniformity in the local laws and domestic 
institutions of each and all the states of the Union. 

"Now, my friends, I must say to you frankly, that I take bold, unqualified, 
issue with him upon that principle. I assert that it is neither desirable nor 
possible that there should be uniformity in the local institutions and domestic 
regulations of the different states of the Union. The framers of our govern- 
ment never contemplated uniformity in its internal concerns. Mr. Lincoln 
has totally misapprehended the great principles upon which our government 
rests." 

Lincoln did not misapprehend. He knew just what he was doing, 
and he knew why he was doing it. He was determined to force the 
fight with Douglas on these two grounds, that the slavery issue was 
national, and that it was fundamentally moral. 

Illinois is not the only State in which Lincoln might have form- 
ulated or forced that issue : but Illinois was the State in which, above 
all other States, that issue could be squarely joined between himself 
and the advocate of "squatter sovereignty," Stephen A. Douglas. 
The event made Douglas a Senator again, and two years later it 
made Lincoln President. 

Illinois the Forum for Lincoln's Greatest Speeches. 

Illinois offered to Lincoln a forum for the delivery of very nearly 
all his greatest speeches up to the time of his departure for his Inaug- 
ural. If we except only the Cooper Union address, virtually all the 
other of Lincoln's outstanding speeches were delivered in his own 
State, and it was the best possible place for their delivery. The 
"House-divided-against-itself" speech has already been referred to. 
His "Lost Speech" at Bloomington, May 20, 1856, could not so well 
have been delivered in any other State convention. His Peoria speech 
of October 16, 1854, might have been ignored if delivered in another 
State, but in Illinois, it virtually made certain the contest four years 
later with Douglas. 

Illinois Gave Lincoln Most of His Offices. 

Illinois gave to Lincoln every office that he ever held, except 
that of the Presidency and the postmastership of New Salem. Even 
in those important positions Illinois exerted an influence far from 
negligible. When he was a candidate for the Presidency he recorded 
in a sketch of his life written with his own hand that his election as 
captain of his company in the Black Hawk war gave him at the time 
more satisfaction than any subsequent honor. He also recorded that 
his defeat in 1832 when he was a candidate for the Legislature was 
the only defeat he ever suffered at the hands of the people. The 
people who thus voted for him whenever they had opportunity were, 
down to 1860, wholly Illinois people. Even in the election of 1832 
when he was defeated, that part of Illinois that knew him, the part 



n-TWBHljnitwl'lWIWlBHWWHWlSillBII 



22 

adjacent to and inclusive of New Salem, voted overwhelmingly in 
his favor. A Legislature declined in 1858 to make him Senator ; a 
President in 1848 declined to make him Land Commissioner, but the 
people of Illinois gave him every office which he ever asked of them. 

Illinois Fence Rails and Their Various Uses. 

Illinois did something for Lincoln worth remembering in pre- 
serving some of his fence-rails, and the memory of his making them. 
He made them in 1830, and the State Republican Convention of 1860 
was held in Decatur, only ten miles away from where those rails still 
formed some part of a fence. Thither came Lincoln, to attend the 
convention that on May 9 and 10, 1860, was to elect delegates to the 
National Republican Convention, to be held in Chicago, scarcely a 
week later. May 16. The northern part of the State was still strongly 
for Seward, though the Chicago Tribune had already come out 
squarely for Lincoln. But the Decatur Convention was not long 
divided. Richard J. Oglesby and old John Hanks had found two of the 
old rails, and at the opportune moment they were brought into the 
Convention, with a reminder that Lincoln was "the rail candidate." 
So he proved to be ; and the Seward boom fell flat in Illinois. From 
Decatur the Lincoln hosts went almost directly to Chicago, carrying 
with them the fresh enthusiasm of their Decatur experience. 

Illinois the Scene of the Convention that Nominated Lincoln. 

Finally, Illinois offered to Lincoln a place for the National Re- 
publican convention of 1860. In the boisterous young city by the lake, 
within the borders of the very State where Lincoln had split his rails, 
convened the delegates from all the States where there \vas organized 
opposition to the extension of slavery. We do not know what would 
have happened if the Republican Convention had been held in some 
other city where as many men were shouting for Seward as in Chi- 
cago were shouting for Lincoln. We do know that the galleries were 
potent then and even now not wholly lacking in their power to influ- 
ence a body of delegates. It was Lincoln's own State that furnished 
the theater for that dramatic act which made him President of the 
nation. 

But the theater was not the whole play. Illinois was geographic- 
ally and politically even then a State whose support was of vast impor- 
tance to the ticket of the new political party. Illinois did not dictate the 
nomination ; that was done by the opponents of Seward, after failure to 
discover another candidate who could carry the convention with good 
prospect also of carrying the election ; but the influence of Illinois in 
both these matters was important ; and Illinois was by that time united 
in support of Lincoln. And, when all else has been said, it is not to 
be forgotten that Illinois furnished a large fraction of the shouting. 

Lincoln's Farewell and Return to Illinois. 

The time came for him to say farewell to his own Illinois. He 
said it first to his aged step-mother, who remembered with loving 
heart how he had been dear to her as her own son, and had never 



23 

spoken to her an unkind word. He said it to his old neighbors, as he 
stood on the rear platform of the train with the wet eyes asking them to 
commend him to God in their prayers. And then he went away. 

He came not back, save only the sacred memory of him, and 
the holy pride with which he was held to lasting honor, and the dust 
that once had enshrined his great soul. Thus wrote Walt Whitman 
in the spring of 1865 : 

"When lilacs last in the door-yard bloomed, 

And the great star early drooped in the western sky in the night, 

I mourned, and yet shall mourn with ever returning spring. 

ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring; 
Lilacs blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west, 
And thought of him I love. 

Over the breast of the spring, the land amid cities. 

Amid lanes and through old woods (where lately the violets peeped from 

the ground, spotting the gray debris;) 
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes — passing the endless 

grass; 
Passing the yellow-speared wheat, every grain from its shroud in the 

dark-brown fields uprising; 
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards; 
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave. 
Night and day journeys a coffin. 

Coffin that passes through lanes and streets. 

Through day and night, with the great cloud darkening the land. 
With the pomp of the inlooped flags, with the cities draped In black, 
With the show of the States themselves, as of crape-veiled women 

standing, 
With processions long and winding, and the flambeaus of the night. 
With the countless torches lit — with the silent sea of faces and the un- 
bared heads, 
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the somber faces, 
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong 

and solemn ; 
With all the mournful voices of the dirges, poured around the coffin, 
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organ — where amid these you 

journey, 
With the tolling, tolling, bells' perpetual clang; 
Here! Coffin that slowly passes, 

1 give you my sprig of lilacs!" 

The long journey ended. The lilacs bloomed and drooped. The 
gates of Oak Ridge opened and closed. Abraham Lincoln was at 
home again, in his own Illinois.* 

As the body of Lincoln returned to the soil of his own State, 
Edna Dean Proctor, then a young woman, wrote a noble poem, a copy 
of which in her own handwriting hangs in the tomb of Lincoln, from 
which I quote a few lines : 



♦Abraham Lincoln was assassinated on Good Friday night, April 14, 1865, and 
died the following morning. His funeral was held from the White House at noon 
on Wednesday, April 19. The body left Washington at 7 o'clock, Friday morning, 
April 21, and journeyed bv way of Baltimore. Harrisburg, Philadelphia, New York, 
Albany, Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis and Chicago. The departure from 
Chicago was at 8 o'clock p. m. on Tuesday, May 2. Springfield was reached next 
morning. The Springfield funeral took place on Thursday, May 4. Late on the after- 
noon of that day, his body was laid to rest in Oak Ridge cemetery. 



24 

"Now must the storied Potomac 

Honors forever divide; 
Now to the Sangamon fameless 

Give of its century's pride; 
Sangamon, stream of the prairies, 

Placidly westward that flows. 
Far in whose city of silence 

Calm he has sought his repose. 

"Not for thy sheaves nor savannas 

Crown we thee, proud Illinois! 
Here in his grave is thy grandeur. 

Born of his sorrow thy joy. 
Only the tomb by Mount Zion 

Hewn for the Lord do we hold 
Dearer than his in thy prairies. 

Girdled with harvests of gold." 

Is Illinois Capable of Producing More Lincolns.? 

Times have changed. We no longer have or need those same 
conditions, but we need men of the same spirit. Is Illinois adapted to 
produce men now of the Lincoln type? We have sung tonight our 
State song which has some merit, and some undeniably fine lines. I 
could wish that it had more idealism. It is not enough that we have 
rivers gently flowing or prairies verdant growing and straight roads 
leading along section lines to Chicago, nor that the breezes murmur 
the musical name of our State. What does that name mean? To the 
Indians it meant, 'We are men.' It was a proud boast of the manhood 
of the State. Are we producing manhood like Lincoln's ? I have not 
undertaken to write a new State song, but I have written a little 
rhymed sermon, and that is no apology: 

Not thy farms with cattle teeming, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Nor thy factories smoking, steaming, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Nor thy railroads hauling freight, 
Made thee, or can make thee great. 
Righteous manhood builds a State, 

Illinois. 

By thy rivers gently flowing, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Are there any great men growing, 

Illinois, Illinois? 
Long before the white man's ken. 
Proud thy boast, "My sons are men"; 
This thy glory now as then, 

Illinois. 

Lincoln's ashes thou dost cherish, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Guard his virtues, lest they perish, 

Illinois, Illinois, 
Justice, righteousness and skill, 
Honor, faith and strong good will, 
These thy guiding beacons still, 

Illinois. 



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